Retired engineer Olavi Goos was bicycling along the lakefront recently when his cellphone rang.

"Hello, Finnish consulate," the Bucktown resident and Finland native said after steering his bike to the side of the path.

While powerful NATO countries such as Germany and France have staffed consulates on Michigan Avenue befitting their global status, dozens of smaller countries rely on appointed honorary consuls, some of them native Chicagoans, to represent their interests here.

Their business cards may inspire awe, but their unpaid labors aren't usually very glamorous. But the upcoming NATO summit is temporarily changing the volunteer consuls' lack of status, a least a little.

"I'm not a professional diplomat; I'm an engineer," said Goos, one of 10 honorary consuls expected to be a part of this weekend's NATO summit. "But when … trouble happens, that's not a problem. I can wake up and go to the airport if necessary."

Rather than sending coded cables or enjoying diplomatic immunity from parking tickets, honorary consuls typically find themselves fielding calls at all hours from travelers who've lost their passport, need a visa or other paperwork, or, more rarely, have a medical emergency.

Some consuls also give cultural presentations at local schools or set up meetings for Chicago businesses interested in overseas deals. They also call foreign nationals locked up in Illinois jails, help translate in a pinch at hospitals or O'Hare International Airport or help elderly nationals apply for a pension back home.

This weekend, some honorary consuls will be ferrying around low-level aides or riding in a bus instead of the presidential motorcade, but they'll also get a chance to rub shoulders with foreign ministers and — they hope — heads of state.

"This will be my first time meeting the president," said Latvia's honorary consul, Robert Blumberg, a Chicago attorney. Blumberg grew up in Chicago's Latvian community, which is centered around Zion Lutheran Church in Albany Park, and works out of a Loop law office filled with Latvian flags that signify its other role as consular office.

The honorary consuls in Chicago involved in this weekend's summit include a Jordanian microbiologist-turned-developer working out of an Alsip business park and a former FCC chairman who is senior counsel at a prestigious Loop law firm. Mongolia's consul works for a gasket manufacturer, while tiny but wealthy Luxembourg is represented in Chicago by the son of former House Speaker Dennis Hastert.

Attorney Ethan Hastert said his ancestors came to the Chicago area from Luxembourg, and he became involved in the local "Lux" community here about seven years ago when he was asked to join the board of a nonprofit building a Luxembourger cultural center in Wisconsin.

Hastert said his role in Chicago is split between "ceremonial" duties such as setting up meetings when representatives from the Grand Duchy visit Chicago and more prosaic tasks like notarizing documents.

But he's going to miss the NATO hoopla — Hastert said he'd be out of town on a family vacation.

Ihsan Sweiss, whose consulate in Alsip serves the roughly 75,000 Jordanians estimated to live in the region, said much of his work involves helping businesses with customs paperwork and "facilitating people visiting the Holy Land."

Sweiss, who previously published the Voice of Jordan newspaper, said this week will be much different. He will be attending at least one dinner with Jordan's Prince Faisal bin Al Hussein and Princess Aisha bint Al Hussein.

Belgium's honorary consul, Paul Van Halteren, spends his evenings and weekends representing his native country at events around Chicago and also hosts intercultural dinners at his two-bedroom Wicker Park home.

A bedroom in the home has served as Belgium's consulate here since 2004, when the country closed a fully staffed consulate that had been in Chicago in one location or another since 1854. The City Council approved a parking space in front of his building for visitors to the consulate.

On Saturday, he plans to order enough Chicago-style deep-dish pizza to feed Belgium's delegation from Washington.

"It's a small inconvenience for everyone, but it will put Chicago on the map of the world," he said of the NATO summit, hoping that the attention it brings the city will help draw tourists. "Washington and London don't need any advertisement, but for Chicago I think it really will be nice."